


words

by Runespoor



Category: Naruto
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Jossed, Subtext
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 05:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7422118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runespoor/pseuds/Runespoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sasuke's always been Itachi's most important rule: a character study on Itachi, from pre-reveal times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	words

**Author's Note:**

> This has been irremediably Jossed, of course; but this was the first time I tried to get a grip on Itachi's character in early 2007 and all we had to go on was Sasuke's Valley of the End flashbacks and a broken wrist in an inn of Fire Country, and I've been fond of this piece ever since. I think it does interesting things.

1.

Itachi thinks in simple thoughts, and he lives in a simple world. He isn't one for introspection, and his words have all flooded out of him when he was thirteen (he remembers), but he's only ever had one aim, the simplest.

He wants to attain perfection.

_(He wants to die.)_

(But unlike any other teenager, Itachi doesn't change.)

(He only joined Akatsuki because they contacted him before anyone else, you see, and Itachi had no plans, and no place to go; he only inquires about the Akatsuki's goal a few months or several years after he donned the black-and-red cloak.)

2.

The time Itachi spouts words burning with an anger that he recognised was not his, it's not his father that he aims the Mangekyou at when he's kneeling on the ground. (The anger was Sasuke's.)

Sasuke is looking at him, half-hidden behind the door, half-hidden behind the retreating figure of their father; he has tears in his eyes and he is the one who shouted at him to _stop it, niisan!_

And Itachi felt his knees giving under him and felt his straight back bowing.

3.

Itachi doesn't like expectations, doesn't like the casual way his brother claims him as his – decides Itachi's future and orders Itachi to _stop it, niisan._ He isn't sure Sasuke realised; realises.

(Present is the only tense for Itachi; Itachi lives in a simple world. Things only are, or they aren't.)

But Itachi doesn't hate his brother. Itachi never decided to kill Sasuke, and thus he cannot find failure in that he left Sasuke alive. Sasuke will one day set Itachi free himself, and Itachi will not be the slightest bit sad that his brother will have outgrown him.

Itachi, nevertheless, doesn't like the way Sasuke shakes at his control and reclaims Itachi so easily as his, years after Itachi left Sasuke broken and bleeding on the ground of the Uchiha compound – years after Itachi tried to break Sasuke's hold on him, only to realise, in a hotel corridor somewhere in Fire Country, with the Kyuubi container and the Toad Sannin present, that he failed.

Why else would Itachi have used Tsukiyomi on him, if Sasuke hadn't prompted him to.

4.

Words are not Itachi's friends, or his weapons. He wouldn't think of lying for the sake of lying (Itachi lives in a simple world), so when his mouth pours the lie that he never loved Sasuke and never was the brother he pretended to be, he's only parroting the most hurtful words he can think of; those Shisui threw at him. (Before he killed Shisui, in what may have been the only time he ever felt anger; a rusty, dull feeling that emptied his mind and closed onto Shisui's hateful eyes.)

This is why Itachi likes Kisame, as much as he could be said to like anyone; Kisame is the only person Itachi has ever known who calls him 'Itachi-san'.

(In Konoha Itachi was 'Itachi-kun' or 'Uchiha' or 'ANBU-san' or 'Niisan', and in Akatsuki he's only Itachi.)

No-one has ever called him like they respected him.

(In the end, Itachi is nothing more than a teenager, or a god.)

5.

Itachi doesn't think of himself as either a teenager or a god.

Living in a world of simple truths, he thinks of himself as a shinobi, as a man, as a mass of sinews articulating bones and muscular tissues where oxygen is brought by blood, and covered by skin. (He doesn't see himself as a weapon since he killed his clan.)

Itachi doesn't think of himself as either a teenager or a god, but when Sasuke looks at him Itachi almost thinks (Itachi who doesn't think in metaphors) that Sasuke makes him feel a god.

In truth, Sasuke makes him feel like a teenager.


End file.
